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  Print this article |   Close this window There are dangers in hyperbole January 7, 2004 Some would rather the US failed than Iraq prospered, writes Tony Parkinson.A Belgian colleague of mine from the days of the 1991 Gulf War, Alain Hertoghe, has been sacked from his job at the La Croix newspaper in Paris. His crime? To have the temerity to suggest publicly that American strategy in Iraq was not the wholesale strategic disaster so many commentators, in France and elsewhere in the West, would have us believe.In his book, The War of Outrages, Hertoghe monitored war coverage by five...

A SWEDISH writer of Kurdish origin has filed a criminal complaint against Iraq's former information minister, accusing him of ordering the murder of two Iraqi dissidents in 1985, when he was Iraq's ambassador to Sweden. Mohammed Saeed al-Sahhaf received wide attention during the US-led invasion of Iraq for hurling anti-American insults and outlandish claims of stunning Iraqi military victories over the invaders. He won cult status worldwide, his image emblazoned on T-shirts and over the internet. "The image of al-Sahhaf as a comical individual is totally false. I want his true identity to be known. He is a killer," Kurdo...